


perfect places

by dangercupcake



Series: Perfect Places [1]
Category: Superstition by Superstition_hockey
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Hurt feelings, M/M, Rookie/Vet, breaking up, no one is right, staying friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-12-13 11:38:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11759049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dangercupcake/pseuds/dangercupcake
Summary: It wasn’t really a breakup. They hadn’t really been dating.





	perfect places

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Split the D](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7584769) by [Superstition_hockey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Superstition_hockey/pseuds/Superstition_hockey). 



Jacks stretches his legs out and knocks his knee against Luc’s knee. When Luc looks at him, Jacks grins, letting his mouth stretch like his legs until Luc grins back, dirty, filthy, gonna-suck-you-in-the-bathroom grin.

“Fine,” sighs Giroux. “Don’t make me make it a hundred, boys.” He puts his palm out, and Jacks digs for one of the fifties he’s started carrying around, just for the fines he and Luc get. Rosie usually collects, but Jacks doesn’t like to let it build up because then he has to Venmo like $6000 and it’s embarrassing. 

Luc shrugs. “Tag me at the end of the night, mon gar,” he says. “I’ll pay it all at once.”

“Filthy,” says G, but he pockets Jacks’ fifty and goes back to his beer without a lecture. 

“Hey, don’t we have to fine _you_?” Jacks kicks him from across the table. “Eh? Holly? Get in on this, eh?”

“What happened? Another rookie?”

Nolan -- a steal of a UFA sign, and Jacks isn’t sure how they got _him_ from the Flyers, and No in the _same summer_ \-- leans back into the table from where he’d been flirting with the waitress. “Don’t tell me this still happens. I refuse to believe it.”

“My guy,” says Holly, “I will trade you Diques stories for Flyers stories.”

“Come on,” whines G. “You’re all assholes.”

“What stories are you talking about?” Luc’s attention is finally fully on them. “G is a boring old man.”

“A boring old man all the rookies want to fuck. All of them. Every year, a new crop of rookies come in for training camp, and every year they stick to him like flies,” says No gleefully.

“And every year, G lets them down gently,” says Holly. “I’m so sorry,” he puts on a Quebecois accent that sounds nothing like Giroux. “My wife is jealous, you’re so pretty but I cannot.”

“I don’t even sound like that.” G throws up his hands.

“I don’t know,” says Nolan. “That sounded just like you.”

“You sounded _exactly_ like that,” Jacks nods. “You said, Jackson, you’re a good kid, but this isn’t good _for you_ , I’m your captain.”

“Yeah, but Jacks, you told me --” Luc cuts off when every face at the table whips around to him. “Whoa.”

“I didn’t tell you anything, Chantsy,” says Jacks, pressing hard against Luc’s leg.

“No, but you did? Bro, I did not imagine when you --”

“Had a giant crush and it was embarrassing? Right. But that’s all that happened.”

“Oh my god.” Nolan grabs for Giroux’s arm. “Was there _one rookie_ who you couldn’t deny? Please say yes!”

“Definitely not,” says G, but he’s flushed now, all the way to the tips of his ears.

“G, you’re a fucking child molester,” says Holly. “How old was Jackson here? Eighteen? A little baby, away from home for the first time. And you were his _captain_!” He’s smiling gleefully. “How good was his blowie? Rate it on a scale from one to Chants.”

“How do you know how good Chantsy’s blowies are?” asks Jacks, leaning closer to Holly. “Wanna tell us something about your leadership meetings?”

“Aww, shut _up_ , that’s terrible!” cries Holly.

“No, but this, for real, I believe this,” says Nolan. He pushes his beer aside and leans into the table. “Baby Jacks, captain Giroux, you don’t know how cute Jacks was when he came to the Flyers, all sweet-faced and curly hair and everyone was a little in love with the way he’d slide in, you’d see him out of the corner of your eye, and suddenly the puck would be on your tape and you’d have a goal. I mean, bro, if you wanted to suck my dick, I definitely would let you.”

“Thanks, No,” says Jacks drily.

“High five,” says Nolan, holding up his hand. Jacks leans over and slaps it right into Nolan’s head.

“I mean,” says Giroux, “all of you should shut up.” He stands up, a little unsteady, and walks away from the table. 

“Oh, he’s mad,” says Holly blankly. “How did that happen?”

“You called him a child molester,” says Jacks, sighing. “Luc, you got me?”

“Yeah, Jacks.” They bump shoulders, agreeing Luc would pick up the tab and Jacks would find his own way home, and then Jacks goes after G.

He’s bumming a cigarette off two tall, beautiful French girls in the parking lot. Jacks waits until their transaction is done before catching up to G. He tucks his hands in his pockets and then knocks their elbows together. It’s a gorgeous night, so of course they’re spending it in a bar drinking instead of in his and Luc’s backyard. Drinking.

Easier to get taxis if they need them, anyway.

“Want me to drive you home?” asks Jacks after Giroux puffs for a few seconds.

“I’m pissed, not drunk,” G says. 

“Then you shouldn’t be smoking. Save your lungs for our Cup run this year.”

“I never thought I’d win a Cup as fourth-line center.”

“Did you ever think you’d win a Cup as a Nordique?” Jacks leans against G’s car, spreads his legs. “Do you need the pep talk or are you really pissed that Luc almost let people know I sucked your cock once?”

G leans next to him, throwing the cigarette on the ground and stomping it out. “Nobody knows anything.”

“Yeah, making up their own story is way better than knowing the real one.”

“I guess. Fucking hockey players.” G spits on the ground. 

“Luc isn’t going to tell them anything,” Jacks says, just to have something to say. “He’ll let them run themselves down speculating about you and rookies and then say something outrageous.”

“That’s Chantsy.”

“He didn’t mean to do it, back there. He wasn’t thinking.”

“I guess I always wondered if you told him everything.”

Jacks meets G’s eyes. “You knew I told him.”

“Told him _everything_?” G tips back his head, leans it against the car, looks up at the sky.

“I told him the stuff he cared about.” Jacks takes a hand out of the pocket of his leather jacket and puts it on G’s shoulder. “Give me the keys, let me drive you home.”

G acquiesces, and goes to the passenger seat. He leans his head on the window glass.

“You were a good rookie,” he says softly. 

Jacks changes the position of the driver’s seat, and changes all the mirrors, and swallows hard before he answers, trying to be lighthearted.

“Even though I wanted to suck your cock so bad it was embarrassing,” laughs Jacks. When he turns on the car, it fills up with horrible country music -- in French. Giroux never changes.

“Even though.”

“Once you finally let me, I was pretty good at it, eh?”

“Better at it than speaking French,” G snarks, and Jacks laughs again, softer and more nostalgic this time. 

“Lemme ask something dumb?” Jacks leans into the sharp turn and then they’re on G’s street, just a few blocks from Jacks and Luc’s house that started off too big, but turned out to be almost too small for Jacks, Luc, Buddy, Yasha, the rookie they’re housing this year, Mako, the two cats Buddy found in a parking lot, one of the chickens who refuses to go/stay outside, and Sveta, who almost never comes out of her little garret/sunroom these days (Luc thinks it’s because she feels awkward; Jacks has his money on something creative happening in an immense way; Buddy just mutters in Russian). 

They slide to a stop in front of G’s driveway. The front lights are on, and Jacks -- Jacks has the best life right now; he skates on a line with his _husband_ in the fucking _NHL_ , and they are millionaires and he takes care of his mom in a way he used to literally dream about. But he still feels a little twist; there’s a part of him that remembers when he was an NHL-kid, a kid who got to go inside with G and get taken care of by him and Ryanne, instead of having to be an adult for himself, and there was something really . . . familiar and nice about that for that first year of his NHL-life.

“I’m sure it’s not dumb,” says G. He’s still leaning against the door, eyes shut.

“Yeah,” scoffs Jacks. He drives up the driveway and turns the car off. G’s horrible French country music doesn’t go off until Jacks opens his door and lets his leg hang out.

They sit in silence until G says, “Go ahead, Jacksy, ask your question.”

“I just . . .” Jacks shuts his eyes. “After I got hurt . . . we never . . . did that again . . . I already wasn’t a rookie anymore . . . I never could figure out why? What did I do?”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” says G, and hearing him swear in English is so weird, Jacks opens his eyes and looks over. He’s rubbing his eyes. He sighs. 

“Sorry,” says Jacks. “I told you it was stupid.”

“I really don’t want to talk about this,” says G. 

“Well, it’s been like a year and a half or whatever, like, we can just keep not talking about it.” Jacks looks down at the steering wheel.

“You had Dre. It wasn’t like I left you all alone. And you had Chants.” G’s mouth twists when he says Luc’s name, and it makes Jacks’ stomach hurt.

“But I didn’t have you anymore. And then I really didn’t have you because you were on the Diques.” Jacks sighs. “It’s -- just something I’ve been wondering about. Not something you have to talk to me about if you’re really . . . not. We’re fine now. We were fine then. We’ve been fine.”

“We’ve been fine,” G confirms. He opens his door and swings out a leg, then leans over and pulls the keys out of the ignition. “You want to come in, have a glass of white wine before you walk home?”

“White wine?”

“The lights are all on inside. Ryanne’s probably drinking.”

“I meant . . .” Jacks rubs his palms on his jeans. “That’s what you’re inviting me in for?” He looks at G from under his eyelashes. 

“Lock the car before you walk home, bro,” says G and slams the door behind him. Jacks watches him, a dark form in all the lights. Once he’s inside, the lights go off all at the same time, and then inside the house, one by one, as he makes his way to wherever Ryanne is.

Jacks used to know their house inside and out. Now he has no idea. He’s never been there. Never been in their living room, at their feet. Never been in their bedroom, taking up more space than both of them put together. Never sat in a chair in the corner watching them together; never made room for himself; never crawled into this bed to help Ryanne take G apart. Did they keep their old bed or get a new one?

He and G just drink beer together and pretend that they never had anything else but a rookie/vet mentor relationship, and no one can tell.

Jacks pulls his phone out of his pocket. He has 17 snaps from Luc, and texts from everyone on the team, it feels like. He ignores it all to text G. 

_Would you have told me if I had done something?_ he types out carefully.

He waits in the car, watching the numbers on his phone count out the minutes he sits here, feeling the same twist in his stomach he felt when he realized it was over with G . . . G and Ryanne . . . the whole thing was over, and G was never going to say anything to him about it, just stop inviting him to the house, stop taking him out solo, stop coming over at night, stop teasing him about Dre, stop taking him out after practice for his favorite ice cream. There had been a huge hole in Jacks’ life when G . . . like . . . broke up with him. After more than a year together -- longer than Jacks had been with anyone except Luc.

It wasn’t really a breakup. They hadn’t really been dating.

They’d been _something_ though.

Jacks’ phone buzzes and he jumps a little, caught up in memories. Ryanne calling them her “ginger cookies.” So he fucking liked it. Kill him.

 _Come hooooooooooommeee_ it says, with a picture of Luc and Mako, Luc naked, Mako with her tongue hanging out. 

G’s house is completely dark at the front.

Jacks locks the car from the inside before he closes the door and walks home, his hands in fists in his pockets.

**Author's Note:**

> A refresher about what happened when Jacks got hurt in "Split the D":
> 
>  
> 
> _He’s lying there, panicking, trying to figure out if it would make it worse or better if he went home now, how he’d even get there without his car, when his phone starts ringing with Jacks’ number._
> 
>  
> 
> _It’s not Jacks. It’s Claude Giroux, the usual dry chirping sarcasm Luc is used to hearing from his voice completely absent and replaced with exhaustion and worry. “Apparently,” Giroux starts with, “you’re his fucking medical power of attorney and his husband.” Luc takes a lurching breath as Giroux continues, “which is something we’re going to fucking talk about later, but for right now the doctor needs to talk to you.”_
> 
>  
> 
> I may or may not write a sequel; I honestly don't know, please don't ask. I hope you like this story as it stands, completely heartbreaking and also come on, Jacks/Giroux, someone else jump on the bandwagon and write this ginger deliciousness.


End file.
